John Collazuol, longtime Fort Lee building inspector, dies at 93

John Collazuol, whose 35 years as building inspector saw Fort Lee gain an impressive skyline — which made him an uncommonly influential public servant — died Thursday. He was 93.

Mr. Collazuol was working for Otis Elevator Co. when he established a civil engineering practice in Fort Lee in 1954. Around that time, he took the Civil Service exam and accepted a post as part-time building inspector. Fort Lee was then dominated by single-family houses; the first high rises, the Horizon House apartment towers, would not be built until the early 1960s.

Mr. Collazuol retired in 1990. By then Fort Lee had some three-dozen buildings exceeding 10 stories.

“John was building inspector when we were in a very progressive stage,” Mayor Mark Sokolich said.

“It’s a daunting exercise to deal with high-rise development … and there was a point where the town was dealing with several high rises at the same time,” he said, adding that to Mr. Collazuol’s credit, “most of these buildings were built uneventfully.”

Sokolich said Mr. Collazuol had the admirable “audacity” to stop construction when he felt safety was being compromised or codes skirted. “As a young lawyer, I general-contracted the law office I’m in now,” Sokolich recalled, “and John was the first one to swing by and say, “ ‘Hey, you’re doing it wrong.’ ”

In his final months as inspector, Mr. Collazuol halted most work on the 24-story Royal Buckingham condominiums after pieces of wood were blown off an upper floor. He issued summonses along with a tongue-lashing about “horrendous” housekeeping at the site.

John E. Collazuol was born in Italy and immigrated to the United States as a child. He served in the Army in World War II and studied engineering at Manhattan College and Columbia University.

He built a single-family home on a MacKay Avenue lot given to him by his father, who had purchased several parcels in Fort Lee. In 1970 he moved to a two-story house he built nearby.

He never had a desire to take up residence in one of the stylish towers that consumed him professionally, said his son, Steven, of South Nyack, N.Y.

“He had his small patch of grass and that was enough for him,” Steven Collazuol said.

Mr. Collazuol is also survived by Emily, his wife of 67 years; two other children, Maureen Collazuol of Fort Lee and James Collazuol of Peachtree City, Ga.; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.